In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [78]
The Mayor leaned forward slightly on the reviewing stand and even the children sensed that History was about to be made.
For a fleeting instant it appeared as though the two batons would repeat their remarkable interleaving, dodging, weaving avoidance of that lethal wire on their way down. In fact, the one on the right did. But the left baton hovered for just an instant, spinning slower and slower above the copper band, and then, with a metallic “ting,” it just ticked, barely kissed the current carrier with its chrome-silver ball. The other end fell across the other nondescript wire, gently. And for a split second nothing happened.
Janowski “tic tic tic’d” bravely on. Our cadence never varied as our feet sounded as one on that spiteful, filthy ice.
Then an eerie transparent, cerulean blue nimbus, a kind of expanding halo rippled outward from the suspended baton and from some far-off distant place, beyond the freight yards, past the Grasselli Chemical Plant, an inhuman, painful quickening shudder grew closer and closer, as though a wave were about to break over all of us.
BOOM BOOM BOOM!
Hanging over the intersection was a gigantic, unimaginably immense Fourth of July sparkler that threw a Vesuvius, a screaming shower of flame in a giant pinwheel down to the street and into the sky, over the crowd and onto the band. The air was alive with ozone. It seemed to flash with great thunderbolts, on and on. Time stood still. It could have been ten seconds, or an eternity. It just hung up there and burned and burned, ionizing before our eyes.
Janowski “tic’d” on. A few muffled screams came from the crowd. Fuses were blowing out over the entire county, as far away as Gary. High-tension poles were toppling somewhere miles away. Steel mills stopped; boats sank on the river. It was as though some ancient, thunderbolt-hurling God had laid one right down in the middle of Hohman on Thanksgiving Day The ground shuddered. Generators as far south as Indianapolis were screaming. Duckworth had hit the main fuse. It was the greatest Capper of all time!
By now the second baton had descended. Without so much as an upward glance, Duckworth caught it neatly and spun on. The drum section picked up the cadence and we marched smartly through the intersection, leaving behind a scene that forms the core of several epic poems relating the incident.
Duckworth immediately signaled for “El Capitan,” and as we attacked the intro the crowd burst into a great fantastic roar of applause and surging emotion. The aroma of burnt rubber, scorched copper, ionized chrome, and frozen ozone trailed us up the street. Santa Claus, in a window, sat mouth agape. Grumpy’s hammer was held stiffly at half-mast. The Christmas trees had flickered out, and MERRY XMAS neon signs were dark.
We knew that the baton that had gone up in smoke had been one of Wilbur’s awards—his Presentation set of matched wands, won at the State Championships. The other, the survivor, he held lightly in his gloved right hand, his arm shooting high over his head and down diagonally across his body, up and down, up and down. He spun as we finished “El Capitan.” Three quick blasts, the signal for “Under the Double Eagle.” His eyes as steely as ever; his jaw grim and square.
From all sides we could hear the sound of sirens approaching the scene we were leaving behind us. “Under the Double Eagle” with its massive crescendos, its unmatched sousaphone obbligato. As we played this great classic and Duckworth led us on into the gloom, every sousaphone player, every baritone man, the trombones, the clarinets, the piccolos and flutes, the snare drummers and Janowski, all of us thought one thing:
“Did he plan it!?”
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